We at Toyota are continuously looking for ways to reduce our impact on the environment. In this Better Earth section you can discover what we have done, what we are doing and what we plan for the future to ensure that we achieve harmony between people, products and the planet.

We at Toyota are continuously looking for ways to reduce our impact on the environment. In this Better Earth section you can discover what we have done, what we are doing and what we plan for the future to ensure that we achieve harmony between people, products and the planet.

Four R's for a Better Earth

We have long made it a priority to develop manufacturing methods and vehicles that have less impact on the environment. This 360-degree approach is based on what is popularly known as the four R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover. These simple words help define our constant improvement in the way we design and make vehicles, how our vehicles perform when driven by our customers, and how they can be safely and responsibly disposed of when they reach the end of their useful life.

Our focus on the four R's helps us minimise the use of valuable natural resources and our carbon emissions. It also helps us think about how we can make future vehicles that are even cleaner and more efficient, by using innovative materials and alternative power systems. This approach will lead us to our goal of the ultimate eco-car, one which has zero impact on the environment at every stage of its lifecycle.

Reduce

Reduce is about using less and having less of an impact on the environment. This applies to everything we do, from designing cars that make fewer demands on the environment to creating manufacturing processes that use fewer resources and create less pollution.

Reuse

Those things we cannot reduce, we seek to make reusable. During a car’s time on the road, many of its parts can be reconditioned and reused. The same principles apply when a vehicle is prepared for scrapping. It may still contain many parts that can be retrieved for reconditioning and reuse. In our manufacturing operations, we make sure we reuse rather than waste resources, such as water and any surplus materials from our production processes.

Recycle

If we can recycle things, we don’t have to use as many new resources or materials to make new ones. We use recycled materials to help make new cars and we look for ways to recycle components from our vehicles, such as parts from our hybrid powertrains. Recyclability is designed in to all our vehicles.

Recover

To keep waste to an absolute minimum, we try to recover as much as we can from our manufacturing operations. We also work with specialist partners to create the best possible disposal processes for our vehicles. Even the finest waste residues can be recovered and used, for example as an alternative fuel source for industry.